LineManager · published
Hi everyone, this was one of the busiest weeks so far. It all revolved around one big question: how do you build your own streets in LineManager so that traffic actually drives on them? On top of that came car parks, traffic lights, street lamps, bridges, accidents with emergency services, pedestrians and a whole fleet of new vehicles. A lot of this already runs in my test build, some of it is still in progress and will be merged over the coming weeks. Each section ends with its current status. The images come from my vehicle studio and the game's automated image tests. The game UI in the screenshots is in German. The week at a glance Build streets from presets – cars and buses drive on them
Junctions with priority roads, right-before-left or traffic lights
77 real car parks in Naumburg, park-and-ride at the station
A kit for traffic light masts with curved booms and arrow lights
Accidents with ambulances, police and detours
Pedestrian figures with walking animation
72 unbranded vehicle models, including a tram with folding doors Build your own streets The map editor now offers four street presets: residential street (6 m), two-lane main road (8.5 m with a centre line), one-way street (4.5 m) and roundabout (7 m wide ring, 14 m radius). Sidewalks are 2 m wide each. While you drag, a preview shows where the street will go. It snaps to street ends, centre lines and kerbs, to 45° and 90° steps and to the grid. Hold Alt to turn snapping off. Width and radius can be adjusted with handles, Ctrl+D duplicates, and every drag is exactly one undo step. Most importantly, streets you build become part of the traffic network. Cars, buses, trucks and emergency vehicles drive on them, and roundabouts are driven anticlockwise. Left: street presets and the new junction panel. Right: rebuilding an existing street. Junctions get a 2 m kerb radius. Where a minor road meets a bigger one, a give-way rule is applied automatically. In the junction panel you can choose right-before-left, set priority per approach or add a traffic light, and ban individual turns. Rebuilding existing streets: streets imported from OpenStreetMap can be redesigned with a preset, a width from 4.5 to 10.5 m, a sidewalk on the left or right and a surface such as asphalt or cobblestones. Still in progress: one-way streets by sign, moving a street's course by up to 3 m, and new streets that connect to the middle of an existing one. A junction with rounded kerbs, paving and lane arrows. For the details there are cycle lanes, zebra crossings and signalised crossings, hatched areas, kerb heights from 0 to 18 cm, lane arrows, parking bays and landscape surfaces of grass, soil, sand or gravel with soft edges. I'm currently merging these tools with the new street builder. Cycle lanes, a zebra crossing, a signalised crossing and a hatched area on one street. Landscape surfaces: grass, soil, sand and gravel. In the object editor you can now select several objects as a group (Shift+click or a selection box), copy groups and save them as an ensemble. A bench with a bin and a lamp only has to be put together once. Status: presets, junctions, drivable streets and rebuilding existing streets run in the test build. The detail tools and connecting to existing streets are in progress.
Parking in Naumburg Naumburg now has its 77 real car parks from OpenStreetMap. Cars head for them and occupy a bay, with up to 24 cars parked at once. How scarce parking is feeds into people's choice of transport. Up close you can see kerbs, entrances, P signs and bay markings of 2.6 × 5 m. The station car park offers park-and-ride: up to six commuters leave their car there for the whole day. Events use the car parks nearby. The large car park at the Vogelwiese. The bigger car parks are currently getting a redesign. From 40 bays upwards, every eighth bay becomes a tree island, two accessible bays sit at the entrance, and paid car parks get a red and white barrier. Multi-storey car parks are no longer drawn as an open surface. Tree islands, accessible bays and a barrier at the entrance. Parking bays on the station forecourt. Status: car parks, parking pressure and park-and-ride run in the test build. Tree islands, accessible bays and barriers are done but not in the test build yet.
Traffic lights made to measure Traffic lights now have German-style 3D signal heads: vehicle and pedestrian lights, two-aspect signals and the signals for buses and trams. New is a kit for traffic light masts. One mast carries up to six heads, split into up to four subgroups. There is the plain pole, a boom to the left or right, and a curved boom modelled on a photo reference with a cross arm 4 to 6 m high and 2 to 8 m long. Arrow lights for left, right, straight ahead and combined are included. For now they are purely visual; separate turn phases will come later. Curved boom, left and right. In the map editor you can edit signal groups and phases. Each head is assigned one of four phases, and there are programmes for normal operation, peak hours and events. Left: a mast with three heads. Right: signal groups and phase programmes. Status: the 3D signal heads run in the test build, the mast kit and phase programmes are in progress.
Lights on: street lamps Three street lamps have been added: an outreach lamp (5.55 m), a historic lantern (5.97 m) and a globe lamp (4.30 m). You place, rotate and scale them in the object editor. Between 8 pm and 6 am they glow warmly and cast a soft pool of light on the ground. The three models by day and by night. Status: in progress.
Bridges, the Wenzel wall and trees Ten new structure models: the Saale bridge near Henne with five stone arches, the green truss bridge of the Unstrut railway near Roßbach, a stone arch bridge, a concrete road bridge, a steel girder railway bridge, a wooden footbridge, and Naumburg's Wenzelsmauer town wall with a straight section, a corner and an arched gate. Wall, gates and towers stand at 51 places in town. Wherever roads, paths or tracks cross water, the bridge is now created automatically. On top of that, 132 trees now grow along the Wenzelsmauer and at both Saale bridges: oaks, beeches, birches and lindens. The Wenzelsmauer, the Saale bridge near Henne and the Unstrut railway's Saale bridge. Status: in progress. The models are inspired by the real structures, not surveyed.
Accidents and emergency services Every now and then, there's a crash in Naumburg. The first accident happens after about ten minutes of game time, at least 30 minutes pass before the next one, and there are never more than two at once. Accidents come in four levels of severity. Emergency services are limited: two ambulances and two police cars. On site there are hazard lights and traffic cones, the road is closed in one direction or completely, and buses and cars are diverted. Once the scene is cleared, the road reopens. Scene secured, partly cleared, road open again. The hospital and the police station are busy too: ambulances and police cars pull out and return, and people walk around the grounds. Status: runs in the test build.
Pedestrians Real people now wait at the stops. There are ten figure types, from commuters and office workers to travellers with suitcases and seniors with walking sticks, each with 16 viewing directions and eight walking phases. So far you can see them at the City-Busstopp and at the bus station by the main station. Passengers waiting at the City-Busstopp. Walk cycle of two figures: a traveller with a suitcase and a senior with a walking stick. The first people are also walking across the whole town, at 1.3 m/s on the sidewalks and up to 512 at a time. To be honest, the sidewalk network still has gaps: of 4,310 walking trips per day, only 550 find a continuous route so far. That's what I'm tackling next. Status: in progress.
New vehicles The vehicle studio now holds 72 unbranded models. In the game you can choose from these buses: U12, K12, G18, E12, E18, H12, H18, A12, R12, R18 and B115, plus the trams T16, T16Z, T24, Z20, M32, Z28 and T15. My favourite is the T15, a classic four-axle tram with Tatra-style folding doors, four leaves per doorway. T15 – classic four-axle tram with folding doors. Z28 – three-section bidirectional tram with articulated joints. H18 – hybrid articulated bus with three doors. New in the fleet: A12, R12, R18, B115, H12, H18, T15 and Z28. Road traffic is getting more varied too, with 26 models plus additional reference cars, most recently the EL49 large saloon and the GT45 sports car with its rear wing. At the depot you can buy buses and switch a bus to a different model. Status: in progress. Trains, bicycles and people in the studio are preview models only for now.
Overhead lines and track Overhead line masts now keep their distance from the carriageway and the track. Where buildings stand close to the line, the wire hangs from wall anchors on the facade. At the main station, cross-span wires reach up to 20 m, so only two masts are needed there instead of eight. On the track side there are three new track surfaces for trams: paving, gravel bed and concrete slab. Track also gets a true-to-scale bed with sleepers, and turnouts show their individual parts: switch blades, frog, check rails and point machine. Status: the overhead line runs in the test build, the track work is being merged right now.
Behind the scenes: Naumburg's streets from aerial imagery To make Naumburg's streets as wide as the real ones, I built a tool that traces road surfaces from Saxony-Anhalt's official aerial imagery. Under tree shade the infrared image helps, and the official land-use data sets the boundaries. Since this week the whole town runs on fixed street profiles from 4.5 to 10.5 m: 547 streets and 1,167 sidewalk areas. This is still tooling and not in the game yet, but it lays the groundwork for a faithful streetscape.
Small things Top bar menus open on hover, and the collapsed sidebar shows its contents as a flyout.
A more compact game menu with four task areas is in progress.
When panning and zooming the map, scenery outlines are reused instead of being recalculated. What's next? Next week I'll merge all these work streams and test everything in the running game. After that I'll close the gaps in the sidewalk network, so the people of Naumburg can actually walk to their stop. What do you think of the new trams? And which street in Naumburg would you rebuild first? Let me know in the comments. See you next week!